Pinning down dreams

Jada Pichardo looked around a packed room filled with state champions, state placers, national qualifiers, and nationally ranked boys’ wrestlers. She stood in the back to draw less attention to herself but quickly realized she was the only girl there.

She was wearing a bright pink shirt.

It was her first spring practice with Seagull Wrestling Club in Mantua. The then-freshman, however, didn’t care if she stood out among a group of boys because she had one desire: to compete with the best.

“I said it in my middle school days that I was going to be the best wrestler to ever walk the halls of Pennsauken,” said Pichardo, now a senior at Pennsauken.

And she stayed true to that promise.

On March 8, Pichardo beat Montville’s Alexa Ciliotta in the 126-pound final at the NJSIAA championships to claim Pennsauken’s first state wrestling title.

“My freshman year, when I got here, I knew I was going to be a state champ. I knew I was going to be the best to ever do it,” she said. “I knew I was going to be the first to do it. Nobody was ever going to take that away from me. I’m so grateful and beyond words to have this moment. This is my history.”

Pichardo, who surpassed 100 career wins, put in countless hours on the mat to earn her spot on the podium. She wrestled year-round, eventually competing in top tournaments. Last summer, she was a member of the Dominican Republic national team and placed fifth in the U17 Pan-American Championships.

The Olympics are the dream, and she plans to extend her wrestling career to college. Pichardo was choosing between Bethany College in West Virginia and Southern Oregon. But after her performance at states, she’s holding off from making a decision since other schools might come into the mix, she said.

For now, she’ll take a short break from the mat before preparing for freestyle season with her club teams, Seagull and Elite. Her high school career, however, is officially over, and Pichardo feels satisfied in what she achieved.

“It feels breathtaking,” she said. “I know our previous best wrestler at Pennsauken [Michael Panarella], he’s still a volunteer coach. He still comes around and helps out. I texted him afterward, I said, ‘I’m better than you now.’”

When Pichardo started wrestling in sixth grade, there wasn’t a girls’ team. She mainly practiced and competed against boys. It never bothered her.

“I knew wrestling girls at that time period was very uncommon,” Pichardo said. “Then wrestling guys, you’re in this weird in-between where some are freakishly stronger than you or some are just not that strong. It was an interesting time, but even now, it’s not that crazy to me, because at club I only wrestle guys. I’m used to their tactics and how they go about things.”

After her first season of high school wrestling, which she referred to as a year of “getting beaten up on,” Pichardo wanted to join a club team. Her commitment was always there, and she knew club would be the best way to get the most out of her training. However, it wasn’t cheap.

So Pichardo asked her father, Nereido, for money. At first, he wasn’t thrilled.

“I was like, ‘Please, Dad. I really want to do this. I want to get better at this,’” she said. “My dad doesn’t speak any English, but he ended up being completely fine with it, because he always calls me his champion. He always says, ‘Mira, es la campiona.’”

Pichardo’s father immigrated to the U.S. from the Dominican Republic. Her mother, Wanda, is second generation. Her parents got divorced when Pichardo was in the first grade. Her parents did their best, she said, to give the kids a “normal” upbringing.

“My mom was balancing multiple jobs, going to college, and raising my brother and I,” Pichardo said. “But we still had the kid experiences. I would never trade my childhood away.”

Pichardo’s parents always supported her, especially on the mat. But the cost to compete on a travel wrestling team added up quickly. When Pichardo isn’t at practice or school, she’s working at Sky Zone in Maple Shade. Last year, her club teammates helped raise money to send Pichardo to the U.S. Marine Corps Junior and 16U National Championship in Fargo, N.D. It’s one of the largest high school wrestling tournaments in the world.

“Nobody would do this if this person wasn’t the perfect person,” said Seagulls cofounder and former coach Pete DiBiase. “Everybody recognizes it, and everybody wants to help. She’s so appreciative — people like Jada come once every 20 years. I never had anybody exactly like this, but she’s very special.”

And what makes her so special?

“She’ll never miss an opportunity to get better,” DiBiase said. “Either she’s wrestling a boy or a girl that’s 20 pounds heavier. … She doesn’t care; she just wants to get better. She started to recruit girls to come into our program. Her leadership is beyond belief. She’s a leader among everybody in the room — not just girls.”

Before Pichardo sat for an interview at Pennsauken, the school’s athletic director, Billy Snyder, handed her a copy of the now-famous book, Inner Excellence.

Pichardo is a firm believer in manifestation, that if you speak your goals out loud, they’ll come to fruition. She was born at 6:14 a.m., so two years ago, she set an alarm for that time. Each morning, she would wake up and speak her goals.

“Last year, I’d wake up every single day, ‘I’m going to be a state champ,’” she said. “Then I would just go back to sleep. I would constantly do it.”

The alarm is still set. At the start of a new year, she’ll set the lock screen on her phone with goals as a reminder of what she’s chasing, but those have nothing to do with wrestling. It’s about the kind of person she wants to be. Last year, it was “energy and reasoning.” This year it’s “resilience and smile.”

In addition to success, Pichardo believes it’s just as important to be present in losses. It’s exactly what she did in last year’s final of the NJSIAA state championship, when she fell to South Plainfield’s Eva Altamirano in a 4-3 decision.

“When the buzzer goes off and the match is over and you lose, sometimes people will check out,” she said. “But I was 100% socially aware of everything that happened around me. I looked at the scoreboard and thought, ‘Dang, I was so close.’ The last 40 seconds, I made a mistake that cost me the match.”

It fueled her. Each day at practice, if she wasn’t on the mat, she was taking notes of what she needed to do better. She wasn’t going to sulk on the bad days or brag on the good. She put her head down and got back to work.

“Even if people know I wrestle, they don’t know that I’m ranked No. 23 in the nation,” Pichardo said. “They don’t know that after practice sometimes I’m going back to practice. … I do above what’s expected to be done. I just love competing in that type of realm.”

She can’t deny that it made this year’s state title even sweeter. And along the way, Pichardo has impacted the Pennsauken girls’ wrestling program more than she knows.

Her 118 career wins made her the first girls’ wrestler in program history to do so. Head coach Shana Smeriglio, who teaches 10th-grade health and physical education, believes Pichardo’s success will give the next class of girls’ wrestlers something to work toward.

“For the next however many years, I’m going to be pointing to her banner and talking about Jada, hoping that girls come in looking to chase that,” Smeriglio said. “I’ve told the girls that Pennsauken has a name for themselves in South Jersey for girls’ wrestling, and Jada is a huge part of that.”